The simple trick to find out if someone has accessed our WhatsApp account from another location and how to avoid it

One of the reasons WhatsApp has been spectacularly successful is that it is a simple app. Although over the years it has added functions and features, the reality is that It’s still a simple interface app. However, Meta has improved the service with long-requested items.

One of them was being able to use the app on multiple devices at once. This is something that could be done from the start in applications like Telegram or Messenger, but not in WhatsApp. The implementation arrived a few months ago, but with it a potential danger: that someone connects without us realizing if they have access to our smartphone.

And yes, to do this they had to access our mobile or carry out some sort of hack via social engineering to be able to connect on another device, but also It can happen that we connect to a computer without thinking of closing it.. For this, there is an option on mobile that controls all the devices connected to our account.

Connected devices

To find out which devices are connected to our WhatsApp account you must use your main mobile phone, the one used to access for the first time, which is the one that Meta considers to be the priority. In it, if you click on the upper right corner iconseveral options appear.

One of them is Connected devices, this is where we need to click. When this is done, a new screen appears that displays a list of devices that we have connected to the account, with a name that is the operating system it uses: Android, MacOS, Windows, etc. Only with this information can we know whether we started this session ourselves at some point or whether someone took our cell phone.

If you click on one of them it opens a small floating window which shows various data. To begin with, he tells us date and time of the last connection of this device to our account. Additionally, this also marks the location from which it was accessed, it is important to know if the account was accessed from another location.

If any of the connections in this list It doesn’t look like we need to click the red text that says Log Out, so access from that device and location will be blocked. It is important to never give the connection code that WhatsApp asks us to log in or scan a QR that we do not know. Also, if we usually log in from other devices, it’s not a bad idea to review this setting from time to time.

A more secure WhatsApp

Although WhatsApp can be used on several devices, it is normal that it is installed mainly on the mobile phone. SO, It is possible to make the use of this application safer If we make sure that everyone doesn’t pick up the cell phone. For this you can use the fingerprint, facial unlocking…

To use these systems in WhatsApp it is necessary to access the settings of the application and go to the option Confidentiality. At the end of this new section there is an option called App lock, which requires the use of authentication. Once entered and activated, it allows you to automatically block WhatsApp when we stop using the application, or after a minute or half an hour.

This way, anyone who finds their cell phone unlocked on a table, or who steals it from us, will not be able to access the application. Every time the application goes into the background and we open it again, the system will ask to scan the fingerprintfacial recognition or mobile unlocking PIN, depending on the security system we have on the smartphone.

Be careful with texting

It is very important to keep in mind that when you log in on a secondary device, you must have the primary device. However, if someone tries to log in to our WhatsApp account by setting a mobile as the primary device, they will need a code that arrives by SMS to our mobile number.

There have been cases of account theft because thieves pose as parcel deliverers who need a number to make the delivery and what they ask us is directly the code that WhatsApp sends to close the session on our mobile and open it on another device. . Codes received by SMS for this purpose should never be shared with anyone.because they could access all our information.

This applies not only to WhatsApp, but to any account we have with SMS double authentication. This system can be replaced by more robust systems such as hardware keys, but it is still useful, and the most common is that it fails because of an error made by the user himself, and not because of the technology behind it.